MANILA—The 59 allotted seats for party-list groups in the House of Representatives were distributed to 46 organizations after garnering the required number of votes in the just concluded May 9 polls.

Based on the final National Canvass Report released by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) sitting as the National Board of Canvassers (NBoC), the Ako Bicol organization was on top of the 2016 party-list race, getting three seats.

The group garnered 1,664,975 votes (5.1423%) out of the 32,377,841 votes cast for the party-list polls.

On the other hand, the organizations that got two seats after securing more than two percent of the total votes cast for party-lists were Gabriela (1,367,795 votes), 1Pacman (1,310,197), ACT Teachers (1,180,752), Senior Citizens (988,376), Kabayan (840,393), AGRI (833,821), PBA (780,309), Buhay (760,912), Abono (732,060), AMIN (706,689), and Coop-Natcco (671,699).

In computing the allocation of the 59 seats for party-list representatives, the poll body used the formula provided by the Supreme Court (SC) based in its ruling on the Banat versus Comelec case in 2009.

Under the “Banat formula”, the participating party-lists shall be ranked from the highest to the lowest based on the number of votes they garnered during the May 9 polls before undergoing two rounds of allocation of seats.

For the first round, the party-lists that received at least two percent of the total votes cast for the party-list system were entitled to one guaranteed seat each.

In this case, 12 groups were able to meet the two percent threshold, thus resulting to 12 seats guaranteed for these party-lists.

For the second round, party-lists, including those that were able to meet the two percent threshold, would be allocated seats based on the whole number of the product between the percentage of their respective votes and the remaining available party-list seats.

This means that the percentage of vote for party-list “X” was multiplied by 47, which is the remaining available party-list seats, with the product’s whole number becoming the additional seats for the party-list “X”.

Allocation of seats in the second round will be continuous until all of the remaining seats have been distributed, including to those that were not among the “two-percenters”.

Finally, the three-seat cap for the party-list representation is in effect under the Banat formula.

This is already the third formula used by the Comelec in determining the allocation of party-list seats following the “2-4-6 rule” as provided by the Party-List System Act (Republic Act 7941) and the “Panganiban formula” as shown in the Veterans Federation Party vs Comelec case in 2000.

The newly proclaimed party-list representatives will be serving for three years, from June 30, 2016 to June 30, 2019.